Jealous Poo-Throwing Penguins at Edinburgh Zoo (Video)

Penguins ‘jealous’ of the new Panda attraction at Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland are reportedly throwing poo (aka guano) at zoo visitors.

The penguin enclosure overlooks the entrance to the Giant Panda enclosure, and it is from there that Rockhopper penguins are pooping on the humans lined up to visit the million-dollar new star attractions, Tian Tian and Yang Guang.

The zoo has been forced to put up a glass barrier.

Gary Wilson, Edinburgh Zoo’s director of business operations, said:

We’re hoping it’s not a case of monochrome jealousy, but one or two of our rockhoppers seem to have had surprisingly good aim.

A visitor told the BBC:

We were queuing to see the pandas when a man in front shouted out in surprise that his jacket had been hit by a big dollop of penguin poo.

It just missed me and my family and it was really oily and stank of fish.

It was disgusting. It looked like it would be really hard to clean off.

It was quite funny but the zoo should do something so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

A million dollars is reportedly the going rate for a zoo looking to rent a Giant Panda for a year.

Both pandas come from the Wolong panda breeding centre in central China, which has successfully bred 312 pandas. It is hoped that the pair in Edinburgh will breed.

The deal has been criticized by Professor Lu Zhi, a panda expert from Beijing University, comparing the expensive exercise to ‘the pointlessness of taking off the pants in order to fart’. Zhi said that the money should instead be spent on conservation.

But others have criticized the focus on ‘star’ animals like pandas. In 2007, Chris Packham, a British conservationist and one of the more provocative advocates of a new approach, says more would be achieved by shifting limited resources to less glamorous species — bugs, bats, rodents and plants — and to whole habitats.

“I would eat the last panda if I could have all the money we have spent on panda conservation put back on the table for me to do more sensible things with,” he said.

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It seems rather anthropomorphic to think that the penguins are jealous of the attention paid to the pandas. If they are deliberately muting on the crowd, though, it seems to suggest a wicked sense of humour.

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Guano is a very effective fertiliser which used to be quarried (from Nauru for instance, until it was quarried out). Pity Edinburgh Zoo doesn't star collecting it to offset the costs of "hiring" star animals.
I'm ambivalent about such exhibits. On the one hand it may be the one and only time that visitors to the zoo can view these iconic animals. On the other it is profiteering from a situation that humans have perpetrated. I agree with Professor Lu Zhi but then I don't know who would get to keep any of the pandas offspring.